In general, a vehicle has three fundamentally necessary abilities including a “driving force” as an ability of “advancing”, a “steering force” as an ability of “turning”, and a “braking force” as an ability of “stopping”.
The “driving force” is a power, i.e., a torque generated by a power source of an internal combustion engine (hereinafter simply referred to as “engine”) in response to such an amount of depression of an accelerator pedal and transmitted through a transmission to driving wheels to be obtained as a frictional reaction force of the driving wheels and a road surface allowing the driving wheels to travel thereon. The “steering force” is obtained by a steering device capable of changing the advancing direction of, for example, front wheels in response to the operation amount of a steering wheel. The “braking force” is generated in response to the amount of depression of a brake pedal by slowing down or stopping the rotation of the driving wheels to generate a frictional reaction force of the driving wheels and the road surface allowing the vehicle to be stopped.
In general, the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are located adjacent to each other in the neighborhood of the location of the driver's feet. Many drivers depress selectively the accelerator pedal or the brake pedal only with his or her right foot to control the “driving force” and the “braking force”, viz., to control a vehicle speed.
In that case, for example, a vehicle with an automatic transmission (hereinafter simply referred to as “AT car”) is provided with no clutch pedal, thereby allowing some drivers to drive his or her car while depressing the brake pedal with his or her left foot and depressing the accelerator pedal with his or her right foot. In this way, there are some drivers who drive their cars separately using their left foot and right foot to depress the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal, respectively. For such drivers using both their feet separately for the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal, there is a possible case that the brake pedal is depressed while the accelerator pedal is not being released by the driver, or otherwise the accelerator pedal is depressed while the brake pedal is not being released by the driver.
Therefore, there are some cases in which the simultaneous depressions of the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal as previously mentioned are apt to lead to deterioration in drivability.
There has so far been known a vehicle control apparatus which can reduce an output of the engine in the event that the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are depressed at the same time (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
The previously mentioned conventional vehicle is constructed to reduce the torque outputted by the engine with the fuel injection amount of the engine being temporarily reduced in the case that the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are depressed at the same time.
In recent years, there have been developed a wide variety of vehicle control apparatuses each of which is provided with what is called an eco-run control function to have an engine automatically stopped and restarted under predetermined conditions that saves fuel consumption and reduces exhaust gas emissions.
The vehicle control apparatus provided with such an eco-run control function is constructed to have the engine automatically stopped under a predetermined stopping condition and restarted under a predetermined restarting condition. More specifically, the vehicle control apparatus is constructed to have the engine automatically stopped when the vehicle is stopped for a red signal at an intersection, and to have the engine automatically restarted when the accelerator pedal is then depressed to start the vehicle, thereby making it possible to halt the consumption of fuel and the emission of exhaust gas during the time period that the engine is stopped and then restarted.
Further provided is another vehicle control apparatus which is provided with a brake hold function to have its brakes remain held on at the time when the vehicle is stopped. The vehicle control apparatus provided with such a brake hold function is constructed to have the brakes held on even if the brake pedal is not depressed at all times, for example, after the vehicle is stopped in traffic jam or waiting for a traffic signal change at an intersection.